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A great budget mixer

I have always enjoyed baking cakes but I don't particularly enjoy the mixing things by hand and so a few years ago I purchased the cookworks silver hand mixer to take away that burden! From memory it cost me around £8.00 which I thought was reasonable enough for a hand mixer.

The mixer came packed in a small cardboard box and inside was the mixing unit itself and the whisks as well as another set of mixers which was apparently for beating dough....needless to say they got thrown to the back of my cupboard because I tend to make sweet cakes rather than breads and savoury items. The box also contained instructions for use but I think items such as these are pretty self explanatory anyway and so I threw them away too!

The mixer is silver in colour which I just think looks that bit more modern although these days my cheap kettle and toaster are white so in retrospect it wouldn't have mattered had I got it in white anyway! It is a good size and features a chunky handle to hold for when you are mixing which I think is essential, especially if like me you allow a small child to use it when baking too. The mixer has five different numbers in which you can set it to with one being the least powerful mixing speed and five obviously being the most powerful. It also features a turbo button on the side which you can hold in to apparently give it a bit of an extra boost but I don't find this makes any difference at all!

The cord on the mixer is perhaps around a metre in length which is plenty I feel as I always make sure I am baking on my work top where I have a plug near by anyway but this would allow you a certain element of flexibility I think.

The whisks are a silver metal colour and slot in to the holes on the underside of the mixer very easily. They are also easily released after use using the eject button on the top of the mixer and are also easy to clean and store.

I find that when I am using this mixer to mix up a cake mixture that number two or three is sufficient because otherwise it can get a bit too powerful and end up spraying cake mix all over my tiles and things! I do find it tricky to get the remaining cake mix off the whisks when I have finished mixing without covering my kitchen in the mixture too! Sometimes when I am making a cake I need to mix something up and then add more ingredients and then mix again and it is times like this that I really wish the mixer had a stand in which I could place it because I end up having to place it on my work top and then obviously half mixed cake mixture ends up covering my work top which just means more cleaning for me! I realise though that this is quite a cheap item and so I am expecting a bit much perhaps.

I have owned this mixer for probably around four years now and it is still going strong. I bake regularly and so it has been used lots for that purpose as well as for beating Yorkshire pudding mixes or pancake mix and so I really think it has proved to be an excellent purchase! The hand mixer is small enough to fit in to one of my kitchen drawers too and so it is not something that is always out and cluttering up the work surfaces either. I would certainly recommend purchasing this mixer should you be looking for one.

Thank you for reading my review!

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Great value, Great Product

INTRODUCTION ------------------- After struggling to whip a meringue for what seemed like an eternity, i finally admitted defeat and rushed out to buy the Cooksworks hand mixer. Personally i find the Cookworks brand a bit hit and miss, some of the electricals just aren't upto scratch, where as some are fantastic- fortunately for me this one is fantastic.

MY OPINION --------------- It was really easy to set up, i didn't even have to refer to the manual (not that i'm encouraging others not to!). I just clipped in the mixer whisks, plugged it in and it was ready to go. I gave the whisks a quick whirl in a bowl of warm soapy water just to remove any residue from the box, patted them dry with a tea towel and they where ready to use. You can use various settings from 1-5, i do find that anything above two is way too overpowering for really runny mixtures, the amount of times i have had to scrape the mixture from my walls, tiles and appliances whiles cursing myself for having the speed too high- yet i never learn! It is best to keep the faster speeds for really thick mixtures, otherwise you will find splatters over everything.

I have used the mixer to make omlettes, buns, cakes, meringue, pancakes,butter cream topping, whipping cream and probably a few others too. The mixer works fantastically and has significantly reduced the amount of time i use whisking and mixing. Its really easy to clean too, if your lazy like me you can simply place the whisk (metal whisk attachments only DO NOT submerge electrical component) in a bowl of warm soapy water and whisk, then pat dry- you may also need to wipe down the main body from time to time with a practically dry cloth (make sure it is unplugged from the mains). Or, if you don't fancy that you can detach the mixers and place them in the sink or dish washer.

Overall i think purchasing this mixer was an investment and money well spent, it saves me lots of time and effort in the kitchen and will be used by me for many years to come.

Would definitely recommend.

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Does the job well, no real complaints.

I got this at Argos for under £8, which seemed to me to be a bargain. Setting it up was easy, just place the blades into where they are supposed to go - can't miss it. There are 5 speeds to use on this, but i didn't feel the need to go above the first setting. I did try going to the second and third speed settings, but found that the increased speed did nothing for the particular mixture I was mixing - it was smooth enough already. Maybe the higher setting would be more useful for tougher mixes than the cake I was making.

It was not quiet, but the noise made was not excessive - just what you would expect from a small beater. It comes with stainless steel blades, which you just pull out and wash - there is no eject button, though that would be handy here. I would assume that the blades are dishwasher proof, and as they are the only part that gets dirty, they are pretty much the only part that needs washing. The power cord isn't overly long, but is enough to get about in the kitchen.

All in all this was easy and simple to use, and definitely saved me from having to mix it manually myself. I did however, notice that there were marks made on the bottom of the plastic bowl that I used to hold the mix in. I'm not sure whether it was the fault of the machine, or whether I applied too much pressure. I'll find out next time I use it, though I think it was probably me.

The next time I was in Argos I saw the Argos Value version of this one for £4.99 on the shop floor, and when I had a look at it I saw it was pretty much the same thing, just cosmetically different - it was white instead of silver and had a different styled knob - and remarkably has an eject button as well. Perhaps I should have got that instead, but I'm not going to moan over £3. Next time, I'll just get the Argos Value one over the Cookworks one if there isn't really a difference between the two.